Content Warning: Minor gay slurs, gay kid servicing his straight friends, casual sex, crimes, alpaca attack, other fun stuff.
 

 
Before the Fall
"The Pumpkin Heist"
by beforethefall [Inkbunny]



Chapter One: The Setup



After school on an unseasonably warm Friday in late October, four boys passed by the town's community building on the way to their favored park in the old part of town. A festively decorated sign caught the attention of the oldest boys in the group, and as the little gang came to an abrupt halt, the eldest boys read the sign. The younger two of the group, a ten-year-old hooded rat and calico cat of the same age, fidgeted anxiously behind the eleven-year-old opossum and raccoon boys, distracting themselves with a pinch-fight with each other as they were quite eager to burn off excess energy that had been pent up from the school day. The energy was high, as they looked forward to a secured evening without parents, each boy having secured permission from a parent to stay at a different kid's house, unbeknownst to the parents that they'd likely be on the town or in the treehouse all night and often until late Sunday.
"Aardvark Heights First Annual Spooky Saturday and Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest?" Belly tipped his head. Colin scanned the sign rapidly.
"Oh, yeah! Look, it says here that the deadline for submissions is at ten tomorrow morning, and they're doing a trick-or-treat thing in the parking lot, too," the raccoon said, his striped tail swishing; a sure sign that he was plotting. The raccoon's tail was wrapped in a bandage about halfway down, thanks to a failed ploy to extort money from their bus driver, which had since simply been chalked up as an unfortunate incident with the school bus door the week before. The promise of candy caught the rat's attention.
"Woah, trick or treating?" Kelly crowded in finally to look at the sign, "Dude...no way, there's a two hundred dollar grand prize?! To hell with the candy; are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yeah, we gotta' get a pumpkin quick," Zach said, giving Kelly one last good pinch on the side.
"Ow, fuck!" the rat barked, swatting at Zach's hands before chasing him down the sidewalk a few steps. "I'm gonna fuck you up, dude!" The others were unfazed by the outburst.
"Way ahead of you, Pussycat. I've got a lead, but give me, like, two hours to scout it out. Belly, still got your library card?" Colin asked, turning to the opossum. Belly nodded, looking confused.
"Uh, yeah?" Belly said, with his usual nervous twinge in his stomach. He still hated navigating 'official' business like libraries and check-out counters, but Colin had been pushing him hard to handle more things on his own since they'd gotten rid of Mikey. In spite of the near-constant annoyance of social workers and counseling, with Mikey out of the picture now and the trailer cleaned up into more livable conditions, it had become a lot easier for Belly start catching up to the other kids on his social skills and confidence as the initial dust settled from the events a few months prior, and the opossum started to learn how to live a more normal life.
"Awesome, here's a quarter. Find us something totally rad to carve into the pumpkin! They have a book with guides that you can copy on the machine. Get a good one as big as you can! Maybe not too complicated though," Colin considered, his eyes darting. The other three let him work it out, they could tell he was cooking something up. "...Kellogg, you and Pussycat are on logistics. We need a way to carry a big pumpkin around." Colin gestured his arms widely.
"Uh, if it's too big we won't be able to pick it up," Kelly said, and Colin scoffed.
"We'll figure it out, man. If we get a big one they'll definitely notice us, though!"
"Fine," Kelly rolled his eyes. Zach shrugged and bumped his shoulder to Kelly's firmly.
"Dude, at least we got an easy mission. C'mon," Zach urged the rat, who groaned and followed the cat after a brief hesitation.
"Meet at the treehouse in two hours!" Colin called after the duo. At some point, Belly had caught his own tail and was wringing it between his hands nervously. Colin turned to face him, then glanced down at the wringing hands, and brought his eyes back to Belly's as he rolled them.
"Come on, man. You aren't going to be a chickenshit about going to the library, are you?" Colin challenged, hooking his arm under Belly's and marching him along the sidewalk, before scooping him in closer under his arm with a playful jostling. "You're not even doing anything a little sketchy, dude." Belly grimaced, despite that.
"I feel like I'm gonna get in trouble every time I go there, now... Like they might figure out what we did," Belly mumbled in his timid voice, though he kept up with Colin.
"Oh, come on, man. That was months ago, the librarian probably doesn't even remember your face, if she ever even saw it in the first place with those coke-bottle glasses she wears," Colin snickered. "You got this, man.  Just get us a good pattern and pay her the money and get back to the treehouse, can I count on you for that?" the raccoon asked, searching Belly's eyes. Belly didn't particularly appreciate the patronizing tone.
"Fine, dude, whatever, ugh," Belly groaned before he took the left at the end of the block to head toward the library a couple blocks away. Colin rushed for the main road, where he stuck his thumb out while waving energetically toward anyone who looked reasonably sympathetic to a poor kid's need for a free ride 'home'. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them.
 
 
 
Chapter Two: Scouting and Intelligence



The shitty old van spun its tires as it took off from the side of the country road, kicking up rocks and a cloud of dust that made Colin cough and sputter; as if the joint the teenagers inside it had been passing around hadn't choked him up enough. As the dust began to settle, the raccoon shook his head to try to clear it before getting his bearings in spite of the lingering buzz. He was a couple miles outside the city, at the crossroads of two tar-and-cinder county roads, well off the main highway. He'd been somewhere around here years before; his grandpa had treated him to the unexpected luxury of an autumn trip out to the Montgomery family farm, the brightly-painted sign for which had been erected on the corner, advertising their u-pick orchard and pumpkin patch. Colin followed the sign's direction, walking down the side of the country road.
The titular Montgomery family was a fixture of Aardvark Heights; the red squirrel clan was well over a hundred and twenty strong, though nobody including the Montgomeries themselves could seemingly provide an exact count. They lived in an enormous old historic house out in the country that used to be a winery, or hotel or an inn of some sort, which was surrounded by expansive farmland that the squirrels tended with a diverse variety of crops. The boys were schoolmates with six of the Montgomery brothers, which didn't include the more notorious of the Montgomery brothers around town; Red, "Big" Roadie and Bobby, the eldest three of the core group of boys who were usually in town to run deliveries for the farm or otherwise peddling other less legally-sanctioned products. Near-innumerable Montgomery 'cousins' were also party to the family group's numbers, ensuring that the rusty-red and white furred squirrels were a frequent sight in a small town like Aardvark Heights.
As the house came into view around the curve of the old country road, Colin broke away and skulked along the treeline of the woods that bordered their farm, following along the back fence of the Montgomeries' orchard. He surveyed the farm from just beyond its borders, out of sight as he started to assess the situation with the aid of the late-afternoon daylight. The farm's large fruit orchard and vineyards were up near the main road, separated by a grassy path from the modest pumpkin patch, and the pale yellow cornfields beyond. Colin wandered along unseen, and watched the families browsing through the rows of the patch to pick out their pumpkins. The public pumpkin patch was a fine back-up strategy, but Colin was thankful for a tidbit of insider knowledge, owing to the boasting of Reggie Montgomery. The ten-year-old brother was in the same grade as him and Belly, and had been talking up the prize pumpkins and how his family was sure to win a blue ribbon at this year's state fair. It barely took any pressing or teasing from Colin before Reggie testified to the existence of a secret pumpkin patch only the family knew about, and from what Colin could tell the squirrel didn't even realize he'd outed the secret.
Colin stalked through the trees beyond the u-pick patch until he had enough cover to bridge the gap between the woods and the cornfield at the back of the Montgomery property. He easily slipped through the papery-leaved, dry corn and disappeared into the fields, trying to keep his orientation as he walked between the rows and headed for the farm's interior.
The cornstalks' razor-edged leaves made his nose, ears and muzzle itch and burn from the tiny papercuts they left as he sifted his way through the field, only freezing amidst the leaves when he heard activity nearby. A kid shouting to their parents, parents calling for a run-away child, a tractor towing a hayride trundling its way by, all while Colin laid low in the corn to watch it pass, just ten feet inside the field. He stole further into the farm still, following along the main farm trails, just out of sight within the drying cornstalks. Behind the big barn, past the orange plastic netting fences for the u-pick farm, past the petting zoo, and behind the animal stables and the sprawling greenhouses. Way out back, behind the big house and the family's sprawling back yard. 'Buried so deep ain't no-one gone find it, city slicker' by Reggie's account. Colin intended to put that claim to the test.
He walked for what seemed like a half hour, with each passing corn leaf trying to swipe another slice across his nose. Each row that passed damped his convictions. and thought briefly about turning back as he paused deep in the belly of the field. He thought about changing directions, but didn't want to get lost, but he also couldn't see over the corn, unless he found a tree or something. The fields were expansive, they seemed to go on for miles in every direction when he'd ride with his parents past the place. It would take forever to brute-force the location of the pumpkin patch, and the meager daylight wouldn't last long.
As Colin fretted over his options, a distant, rattly clattering and the sound of grown-up chatter grew closer and closer, and Colin soon realized it was tracking to pass quite near him. He shrunk into the cover of the dry corn, trying not to rustle the papery stalks too much as he kept his ears pivoting, and just ten feet away through the corn, he saw the shadows of the two eldest brothers of the red squirrel family. It sounded like one was pushing a cart of sort, the rolling of which covered Colin's advance as he belly-crawled into position to try for a better look.
"I'unno, jus'ayn, y'think a rich folk'd wan' hire out all th' mess too, but'ey juss' wanna' big'un f'their chauv ta' carve up," the eldest brother said in the iconic Montgomery family dialect; unfiltered, not cleaned up or tamed for the sake of interaction with outsiders. It was a nearly-indecipherable mix of rural Aardvark Mountains and general Midwest redneck, fragmented, abbreviated and blended with a mess of gypsy slang and a uniquely Montgomery family terms.
"'ey; fer'at they's payin'? 'm nuh'gunna' quest' it, seen's th' pa's kushta mush. What'cha' think, this'n?" Red asked. Colin had never heard Red leaning into his familial accent before, but his voice was unmistakable.
"Nawh. That's unk's fer th' sta'fair nex' week, he gone n' picked it ten-day'go, n's' settled. He got dinlow thought'sa winnin' blue ribbon over tha' gawjie. Pretty fugger, ey'. How's this'un?" the elder brother's voice commented. Colin finally managed to position himself where he could see into the small clearing, and saw the squirrels considering the huge, orange-fleshed pumpkins still on their vines out in the secret clearing in the corn. This had to be it!
"Awh, yeh. Tha's oughta' do'one," the younger of the two said, throwing out a tarp as the eldest made quick use of a small folding saw he kept in his back pocket to sever the thick, woody vine. 
Colin took mental notes as he watched them work together to roll the massive pumpkin onto the tarp, and then drag it over to the one-wheeled cart. They positioned themselves on either side of the massive pumpkin and, after a count-down, heaved together on the tarp with simultaneous grunts of effort to heft the huge squash up the foot or so into the wooden one-wheeled cart they'd brought out, where it wobbled unsteadily before the brothers managed to walk it into position and settle it onto its flat bottom to keep it from rolling around.
"Phew! Sheez. Gimm'un'y bigger'n we hafta' shav oud'a vanna' n' trotta'," Red joked, and Roadie laughed as he played a quick game of paper-rock-scissors with his brother. The loser, Roadie in this instance, hefted up the handles of the wheelbarrow to heave it into motion and start trundling their pumpkin back down the path as they kept chatting.
Colin exhaled, only just having realized he'd been holding his breath, and after ensuring the coast was clear he crept out of the corn to survey the pumpkin patch. The grassy, corn-stalk littered clearing was undoubtedly the Montgomery family's secret pumpkin patch; scattered with disorganized vines and massive pumpkins of varying shape and description, all bright orange and obviously lovingly tended. The huge globes were each situated on patches of straw that had been laid out as padding, and Colin slowly wandered between them to size up the available prizes for their heist.
Some of the pumpkins stood so tall and wide that Colin knew for sure there was no chance of the gang moving it. Others, misshapen; too squat, too tall, laying on their sides with weird flat spots or having split or deformed into weird Franken-pumpkins. But then, there, right on the edge of the patch, Colin saw it. Waist high, not too wide, but so big that he and Belly would likely only be able to meet finger-tips were they to attempt bear-hugging the thing. Most importantly, it was absolutely flawless, its surface smooth enough to carve, and already had a bit of blue cloth wrapped around its stem to designate it clearly for the gang. 
This was definitely the one. He had to have it.
 
 
 
Chapter Three: Logistics and Payload Management



Kelly and Zach's pinch-fight continued for the whole walk back to Fallow Acres. They took the long way, along the city streets and through the industrial park, where they were keeping an eye out for inspiration as they peeked through the chain-link fences of the various warehouses and watched the workers to see what sorts of things they had for heavier loads.
"Psst! Pussycat!" Kelly whisper-shouted toward his friend across the alley, "Look!" The rat was pressed in against a gap in a cinder-block wall, peering through the crumbling mortar into a chemical distribution facility that was right up against the railyard, not too far down from Fallow Acres. As Zach joined him, he crowded in to look through the tiny gap.
Inside the perimeter, a worker was wrestling barrels of chemicals off of a specially-outfitted forklift onto a chunky, round plastic dolly that had heavy casters on the bottom. Once the barrels were hefted into position, they were easily wheeled off into the belly of the big truck the workers were loading. A moment later, they'd show back up with the big dolly and the process would repeat itself all over again.
"Dude...it's like, perfect," Zach said, in awe as he watched the workers working as he pushed his shoulder against Kelly's.
"Yeah, too bad none of us can drive a forklift," Kelly said, before Zach pinched him on the back of the arm. "Gah! Fucker!" the rat swiped at the kitten who laughed and dodged out of the way, swatting back at the rat's hands.
"Not the forklift you Melvin, the dolly!" Zach giggled, "If we can get that we could wheel it anywhere, right?"
"Yeah...maybe. Unless it does the skateboard thing on every little pebble on the ground, you know," the rat mumbled, looking back through a gap in the gate as they walked a little further down for a better vantage point.
"Ah, it'll be fine. I mean, look at it! It's not getting stuck in the back of that tru--" Zach was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a heavy duty, hard caster wheel getting stuck on some detritus under load and screeching to a halt along with panicked shouts as the sound of a fully loaded barrel tipping over resounded from the back of the truck.. "...Truck. Plan B?"
"Plan B. Maybe we need something simpler," Kelly mumbled, taking his opportunity to get a solid pinch on the back of Zach's thigh, just under his rump. The cat jumped, yowled and stood board-straight for a second, his tail frazzling out as he swatted back at Kelly's hand.
"Fucker, that hurt!" Zach complained, as he rubbed at the back of his leg. "What do you mean, simpler? Wanna steal a shopping cart? It'll cost us a quarter from Aldi but if we walk all the way back to Shop n' Save..." Zach looked back the way they'd come, not exactly thrilled at the prospect of backtracking more than a mile to get there.
"Uhhh, maybe. We could scam a quarter out of someone in the parking lot like usual though. What about a wagon?" Kelly said, starting to walk down the alley toward the railroad tracks.
"Oh, yeah. A wagon could work. Mrs. Leufschtagel has like an off-road one she keeps in her shed for gardening, I bet that'd carry a big pumpkin," Zach said after some consideration. "I bet she wouldn't even notice if we borrowed it for a couple hours.
"Oh, yeah, I know the one! Dude, let's do that. And maybe something to set it on so it doesn't get all banged up?" Kelly said, his pace hastening along the railroad toward the trailer park, though not so much that he neglected his usual habit of using the rails as a balance-beam, planting one bare foot in front of the other with a methodical sort of carefulness. While it took Kelly a reasonable effort to balance, Zach effortlessly walked atop the other rail at his usual gait, stopping occasionally for the rat to catch up.
"So, what, like, a pillow? Or... Oh! Hey, I know. One of the cushions off of that pervy otter guy's deck chairs. He won't miss one for a night, right?" Zach said, picking a rock up from between the railroad ties. Kelly scoffed.
"Yeah, if they aren't jizz-crusted at least," the rat grimaced. Zach laughed, hurling the rock across the railyard and clunking it against Belly's old fort; a derailed and long-disused boxcar that was steadily being reclaimed by nature.
"Like you'd care," Zach scoffed, "I've seen that thing you and the guys jerk off with, ugh."
"You're just jealous of it, Pussycat!" the rat shouted, "You wish we'd gang up on you like that and knock your queer pussy up!" Kelly rushed the kitten, and Zach laughed and dodged, sure he was about to get a playful pummeling. When the chase began, Zach easily led the rat all the way through the woods beside Fallow Acres on the way to the treehouse. A brief struggle occurred at the door as Zach tried to shut Kelly out, and Kelly simply jumped through the window and tackled Zach onto the couch, wrestling with him until he had the upper hand, and sat squarely on the cat's hips as Zach writhed and tried to squirm out from under him, laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. 
"Admit it! You wanna get fucked by all of us all the time and you totally jerk off thinking about your bros!" Kelly shouted as he grappled for control of t he kitten's hands. Zach was laughing too hard to form words, struggling under Kelly and kicking his legs, his clawed toes raking fruitlessly at the tough skin of Kelly's tail.
"Aaaagh! You'll never get a confession out of me! Torture me all you want!" Zach giggled, unable to help himself; he was already soaking through his briefs from the close contact with his battle buddy. He giggled under his breath. "Or, y'know, do me all you want?"
"I knew it!" Kelly laughed, "You're so gay, dude. I bet you even wanna suck dicks, don't you?" the rat teased, shuffling forward while doing his best to keep Zach pinned down as he squirmed and laughed hard.
"Only for my bros, dude! Don't make it weird!" Zach giggled, "I don't got a dick of my own so I have to play with you guys' dicks instead!"
"Ha! Way too gay, dude," Kelly said, reaching down to tug at his button fly and start opening it up. "Wanna play with mine now?" Zach fidgeted and finally got an arm free, which he used to shove Kelly back as he finally wriggled out from under the rat with a giggle.
"Sure, dude, but let me take my shirt off at least, jeez. I think my mom's wising up, she found crusties on my shirt last week after I was messing around with Belly," the kitten said as he drug his t-shirt over his head and tossed it up into the hammock overhead. Kelly giggled as he fished his briefs' flap to the side and pulled his sheath and growing erection out of the fly in his BDU's, shaking his dick at Zach..
"That's so gross, dude. That's what you get for pulling off when he pops though," Kelly grinned, stroking himself as the cat knelt on the floor and the rat slouched back on the grungy tarp-covered sofa with his legs spread. Zach wrapped his hand around his friend's erection and nuzzled under its tip, before planting a soft lick there. He started stroking Kelly's slender spike of flesh, giggling as it throbbed in his hand.
"It's not my fault. Belly usually pops so quick he can't warn me ahead of time," Zach purred, leaning up finally and closing his lips around the end of Kelly's cock, nursing on it softly before he slowly sunk his muzzle down and gave the rat a rake of his barbed tongue under the tip. Kelly squeaked abruptly at that sensation, his thighs tensing, and he giggled again afterward.
"Ngh! Dude, that's still so weird feeling," the rat mumbled tensely, shuddering as Zach suckled on him and began bobbing his head, still raking his barbed tongue across the underside of the rat's cock, making him squeak loudly. "Gah! D-dude, too much," Kelly complained, "C-can we just do it instead?" Zach pulled up and giggled, pushing his nose down against the rat's big balls through his camouflage pants.
"You're the only one that can't deal with it," Zach teased, "I think you just like to bang me," the cat purred, slowly going down on Kelly one more time as he shuffled his elastic-banded athletic shorts and his briefs off his rump. He pulled up again and turned tail, bracing his hands against the spool as he hiked his tail for his friend. "Just don't dribble on my shorts, okay?" Kelly stared at the offering of the kitten's puffy, slickness-glazed pussy and stirred into motion immediately, bunching his t-shirt up and pinning it to his chest with his chin as he stood behind the cat and jockeyed himself into position.
"No promises, dude," Kelly joked, and Zach giggled a little as the rat nestled his erection up to the kitten's bare folds and pushed himself into the cat, shuddering at the soaked-velvet heat that swallowed him up until he smashed the open fly of his BDUs against the kitten's spread folds and his slender rodent dick probed deep into the kitten's body. He felt himself throb in the kitten's delicious warmth, and when Zach squeezed him the rat pumped his hips, giving a satisfied little groan as he quickly built up a rhythm. Zach was already purring, and the subtle rumble in the cat only added to the delicious sensation of burying himself inside his friend.
"Mnh," Zach vocalized, rocking back against Kelly as the rat built a rhythm, gripping the edge of the spool as his muff was stuffed. The act had become a regular diversion between himself and the gang, a favorite way to pass time while waiting on the others to show up or to burn off energy during the late, but still-sleepless hours of a sleepover. Zach bore down again and felt Kelly arch forward with a soft groan, as three eager throbs of the rat's flesh warned of impending climax.
"Dude, ease up or I'm totally gonna blow," Kelly panted, and Zach giggled, just bearing down again.
"Can't take the heat, get out of the kitten," Zach joked, and Kelly groaned as he pulled Zach tight and hilted himself in the cat as he laughed, and the shirt fell from under his chin to land atop their union, hiding it from view.
"Dude that's so fucking bad, Pussycat," Kelly snickered, slowly working up to a steady rocking of his hips as he got back into the rhythm. "Mnh, dude, I'm totally gonna do it though," the rat panted, excited. Zach could smell the rat's arousal on the air, and felt the drizzles of slickness inside him already as he wormed and bounced back against the rat and they fell back into a steady rhythm.
"Not yet!" Zach whined, rolling his hips back and churning urgently against Kelly's lap. "I- I wanna go at the same time, dude. It feels so awesome when you shoot inside me while I'm blowing off, c'mon," Zach panted, reaching his hand down to work at himself while Kelly kept smashing up against his backside over and over, pumping in deeper strokes.
"Nnnhh, hurry up then, dude," the rat panted, working faster behind Zach as the cat worked desperately to catch up. Kelly settled into a steady pat-pat-patting of his hips against Zach's bare butt, not minding their mingled juices staining his fly, nor the bottom hem of his white t-shirt as the slow buzz of intensifying arousal built in his erection and bloomed to his belly. The tightness built in his balls and at the base of his erection swiftly, before climax roared up with a powerful throbbing in his member.  "Ngh, yeah, ha, oh fuck, dude..! F-fire for effect!" the rat exclaimed as he tensed.
"Haa, w-wait, hold your fire, soldier!" Zach giggled, but he couldn't suppress the sweet, joyful vocalization that escaped him as he felt the rat grip his hips and yank back hard toward his own lap. Kelly hilted himself balls-deep in the cat as he blew off, and the first two hard shots of rat cum spattered against Zach's deepest recesses, setting off sparks in the kitten's belly that hastened Zach's rising pleasure as well. He managed to finally work himself over the edge after the rat's fourth runny squirt splashed off his innermost depth; it rarely worked out perfectly, but Zach had devised a strategy for ensuring he got his own fun as well. 
As the rat grew hypersensitive and moved to pull out, Zach bucked back and sat fully against Kelly's lap as he came, pinning the rat balls-deep inside him as the kitten ground urgently against the rodent and used him for his own pleasure. The kitten mewled and panted as he squeezed and throbbed around the rat's still-jerking boyhood, splashing his own slick, milky-white fluid around Kelly's erection as his walls desperately milked the rat's hypersensitive boyhood. Kelly's eyes crossed and he tensed, short-circuiting as Zach got off against his lap, in the moment not even minding the fact that his entire fly was getting drenched in mingled semen.
"G-gaah-haaaaffuckfuckfff-nngghh..!" Kelly squeaked out, trying his best to drag himself out as Zach bore his full weight back against the rat to prevent that from happening until he was fully satisfied. Wracked with overstimulated convulsions, the rat just jerked helplessly under the cat with his toes wrenched so tightly they started to cramp as his cock kept desperately trying to spurt and spout into the kitten. Zach finally giggled and pulled up, popping off the rat's member and letting it bounce up against his belly, where it slung a pearly streak onto the rat's t-shirt as it jutted out of his pants. "G-gah," the rat gasped as he was finally freed, "H-holy shit, is...is that what Belly goes through when you ride him?" Kelly marveled, and Zach giggled.
"Yeah, probably. Not my fault he spooges so fast; he's getting better though. Aw, dude...you made a huge mess," Zach giggled, cupping his paw between his thighs to catch the worst of the messy drool that soaked his palm almost instantly, and had already dripped enough to make a mess of his briefs and shorts. Kelly laughed as he dug in the couch cushions for their stack of stolen and surplus fast-food napkins.
"Dude, you made at least half of it..!"
 
 
 
Chapter Four: Redressing the Asset



Belly walked up to the counter of the library, where the elderly librarian sat reading her book behind the counter. He dug in his pocket and pulled out his little Velcro wallet, empty save for a picture of his mom and his grandma and grandpa and his library card. He held the card up to the old woman.
"Uh, my friend said there was a book with pumpkin designs in it. Can you tell me where it is?" the young opossum mumbled timidly. He shrank behind the protective cover of the counter as the blue-furred mink woman looked across at him through her bifocals.
"Oh, hello. Yes, dear; it's five cents a page to copy out of it. It should be in the big rack by the copier," the old mink said with her creaky, but sweet voice. "You don't need your card until you come check out. But let me know if you need any help."
"Uh...okay, thanks," Belly said timidly, putting his card away and walking over to the rack. He scanned through the rack nervously, grimacing at all the options. There were sewing patterns, cross-stitch, stained glass, color-by-numbers, crosswords, word searches; it took a few minutes but he finally clocked the orange cover of the Halloweeny-themed book half-hidden behind another and plucked it from the rack, taking it to a table to flip through.
The book was surprisingly thick, with thin, dingy-gray recycled paper pages that had bold black designs for pumpkin carving on them. The opossum settled at one of the tables and flipped through the book, nervously swinging his legs under the chair as he hunted, and soon grew paralyzed by the sheer amount of choices available. A half an hour later, he frowned and started flipping randomly through the book. Two witches around a cauldron. Cat in front of the moon. Werewolf in front of the moon. Bat in front of the moon. Gravestone. Vampire. Belly finally rolled his eyes and let out an audible 'uuuugh' as he slumped back in the seat and let his head tip back over the backrest of the chair, staring at the drop ceiling of the library.
"Having trouble finding a good one?" that friendly, creaky voice came from a few feet away, making Belly nearly jump out of his skin as he remembered where he was.
"No! ...I, uh...yes? ..." Belly mumbled, after his initial reflex. He grimaced again and gestured to the book, "I don't know what to pick, they all seem a little lame and my friends wanted me to find one that would win the contest."
"Oh! Well, there's no sure way to do that, but I think you and your friends would stand a good chance so long as you try your best," the librarian said, flashing a reassuring smile as she patted Belly on the shoulder. Belly groaned.
"The guys are gonna kill me if I pick a lame one out though," he mumbled, flipping through the book a little restlessly. Archy-back cat in front of the moon. Silly ghost. Skull. Jolly Roger. "I just want something that the judges are going to like, you know," Belly said, giving his eyes a break and looking around the library again, before he spotted, hanging above the kiosk in front of the entrance to the library, the big banner that advertised the bikes-for-books program using the town's mascot, Arnie the Aardvark. "Oh, wait..! Do you have any pictures of Arnie around?" the opossum asked, suddenly getting an idea.
"Arnie, dear?" the blue-haired mink asked, sounding confused.
"Arnie the Aardvark! Him!" the opossum pointed to the banner. There was no shortage of use for him around town in various informative posters and school programs. There was even a big, goofy foam-headed mascot of him that cheered for the high-school football team. "Shit, that's perfect!"
"Language, young man!"
"Sorry, ma'am, uh. Do you know where I can get pictures of him though?" Belly asked, sitting upright as he shut the pattern book.
"Oh, well...I don't think I have anything here other than some fliers, but I bet if you ask at City Hall the nice receptionist might be able to get you some pictures of him to use," the old lady suggested.
"Oh, awesome! Thanks!" Belly said, rushing to get up and run to the city hall building, just down the street.

"Pictures of Arnie the Aardvark?" the receptionist said, looking confused at first. "Oh, yeah. Uhm...let me ask around. Can you wait here a minute?" the receptionist said, looking a little lost - but Belly could tell she didn't have much else going on.
"Sure!" the opossum said, standing at the window and trying to peer into the office behind it, curious as the friendly middle-aged black bear got up and disappeared into the back offices. Belly's toes were getting tired, and just as he eased back onto his heels the black bear reappeared, this time with a middle-aged mouse that was dressed very smartly in a dress shirt and tie that probably cost more than Belly's entire, meager thrift-store and dumpster-dived wardrobe.
"Are you our aspiring pumpkin-carver?" the mouse asked, smiling down to Belly. Belly just nodded, a little dumbfounded. "Good to meet you, then. My name is Phil; I work as our city's Community Media Director, do you know what that is?" Belly shook his head, and the mouse smiled more. "It means, at least in a little town like ours, I make all of the materials you see around town, like the banners at your school or the library, or the big sign on the way into town, or the graphics on our page on the world wide web," the grownup said, and Belly's eyes widened.
"Wait, you...you?" Belly stammered.
"I designed Arnie myself," the mouse laughed, "Now, just between you and I, I'm flattered that you want to carve him for the pumpkin competition, and given that it's so late on a Friday, I've got nothing better to do than help you out before I call it a week. Care to come back to my office - sorry, I don't think I've gotten your name."
"Oh, uh... I'm Belly," the opossum mumbled, more timidly.
"Belly?" the mouse wondered, looking a little surprised. "...Is that your real name?"
"Yes, sir," Belly said, as it was, for all intents and purposes, his 'real' name. It was the only name anyone ever called him, save for the social workers, who were readily corrected. Whoever Jerry Bellick was, it wasn't him.
"Huh. Well, no judgement, but haven't heard that one, before. Come on back, Belly, and let's get something whipped up for you."

Belly had a fresh pang of nerves in his guts as he gripped the cardboard tube, closed on both ends with plastic caps. Phil was so nice, and ended up giving him a Jolly Rancher too. Plus, he drew a totally custom pumpkin pattern just for him and his friends to use, with the promise that they destroyed the super-secret pattern when they were done with it so it didn't fall into the wrong hands. Not only were the nerves of doing Arnie's designer proud wracking him, but the added nervous energy that if they failed to deliver, all of that nice man's hard work would've been a waste, even if he did only spend fifteen minutes drawing with a big black marker on the large sheet of paper. The opossum burned a direct path back to Fallow Acres with his prize in hand, excited to have an unexpectedly good win for the gang.
As he approached the treehouse he could hear Kelly and Zach giggling inside already and arguing about something as usual. He pushed the door open, causing both the cat and rat to jump and scramble to cover themselves before they realized who was walking in on them, and they both laughed after. Zach's shorts and underwear were around his knees, and he had a wad of soggy paper napkins clutched in his paw up against his muff. Kelly was stuffing his dick back into his BDUs; it was obvious what they'd been up to, and the pang of jealousy welled up in Belly's stomach.
"Guys," Belly complained, "You were supposed to get us something to carry the pumpkin with!" The opossum frowned, knitting his brow. "I ran all over town trying to get an AWESOME design to carve and we don't even have any way to get the pumpkin somewhere we can carve it!"
"Relax, Belly," Kelly laughed, "We got a plan but it needs executed under the cover of night!" the rat cackled a villainous laugh. "We're going to borrow Mrs. L's garden wagon after it gets dark," the rat said with a grin, flopping back on the tarp-covered couch and huffing. Zach giggled and finished wiping himself mostly-clean, pulling his briefs and shorts back up, though he left his shirt off as he flopped in beside the rat.
"And Mr. V's patio chair cushions," Zach said, grinning crookedly. "What'd you get for us to carve, dude?" Belly looked hesitant, and put the tube down on their spool-table. 
"I'll show you guys when Coll-boy gets back," Belly said, flopping in beside the other two and sulking a little. "I didn't even get to watch, man? Lame," the opossum said, and Zach giggled, hugging him.
"Aww, you want a turn, dude?" Zach grinned, thumbing under the waistband of his own shorts and underwear to pull them away, showing Belly his pussy as he slouched on the couch. Belly laughed.
"Uh, yeah, but Coll-boy will accuse us of just screwing around while he was scouting if he catches us," Belly mumbled. Kelly scoffed.
"Not like it'll take you long anyway," the rat teased, and Belly immediately reached around Zach to swat and throw a few punches at Kelly, which barely connected as Zach was busy playing interference.
"I'm getting better! At least I don't have huge, weird shaped balls you fuckin' bucktoothed needle-dick!" Belly exploded; Kelly had struck a chord, sure, but it was fueled by Belly's own bit of a possessive crush on Zach that he couldn't quite shake, even though it was obvious that Zach didn't play favorites - not among the gang, at least.
"Chill out, dude! Jeez!" Zach shoved Belly to his own end of the couch and laughed, "You guys are the worst. I'll do you later if you want, Belly," the kitten laughed, and Kelly did too. Belly was beside himself for a moment, until he felt Zach's hand in his lap, groping him through his threadbare cotton shorts. "Promise. You can put it in me and everything, dude. But if you want something now," the kitten said a little more tenderly as he knelt on the couch beside Belly. Belly's member stirred to a quick erection, and was soon tenting the loose shorts as the opossum fidgeted and blushed.
"Dude," Belly mumbled a little bit, trying not to be too easily roused out of his sulking, but as Zach pulled the front of his shorts open and wrapped his soft-furred hand around his bare, pink member Belly gasped, "Ah, dude..!" in a rising tone that foiled all of his briefly-lived pouting. Kelly rolled his eyes and picked up the Rubik's cube from the old apple crate that a handful of 'boredom toys' had been thrown into, messing with it as the kitten and opossum fooled around beside him on the couch.
"Sooo..? Can I make it up to you?" Zach giggled, bumping his nose to Belly's cheek. The opossum huffed and slouched, using his thumbs to push his shorts down further, freeing his balls and letting his boyhood stand up its modest few inches.
"Suck it again?" Belly begged, urging Zach to lower his head with a gentle touch on the back of the kitten's head. Zach giggled and curled up on the couch, facing Belly's tummy, and rested his head on the opossum's thighs as he played with his friend's dick.
"Sure," Zach giggled, "Just, like, tap on my head when you're gonna go or something so I don't choke on it again, okay?"
"Uh, okay..." Belly mumbled, blushing a little as he remembered making Zach gag, last time. Kelly watched out of the corner of his eye as Zach nestled his face into Belly's lap and slowly sunk his muzzle down the opossum's cock, oblivious to the peeping. Belly's eyes just rolled back and he groaned, pushing on the back of Zach's head gingerly as he lifted his hips up off the couch, the young opossum's aching boyhood standing at full attention in the kitten's mouth and oozing salty slickness almost instantly for the cat.
"Three," the rat's voice intoned in the background, ignored by Belly and unanswered by Zach as the cat's mouth was occupied. Zach ran his tongue over the opossum's firm flesh in a slow circle before raking its barbs up the underside of Belly's member, as his lips sealed and he suckled firmly around his friend's rock-hard cock. Zach vocalized a sweet little note to Belly, tasting his friend's arousal and feeling how hard and needy he was - just like always.
"Mnh, ah, ff.." Belly muttered, his eyes crossing slightly before he squinted them shut, helping guide Zach's muzzle to bob once on him, then again, and again, picking up a quiet, patient pace. He groaned as his boyhood throbbed and oozed slickness copiously; more than ever recently. He was achingly hard in a way that made him shudder down to the very core as Zach worked on him. "Unnhh, dude..."
"Two," Kelly mumbled under his breath. Zach snuggled his hand up on Belly's balls, gingerly squeezing the opossum's hefty marbles in their taut pouch, tracing his fingerpads over the seam up the middle as he started to suck, sealing his lips around Belly's member and drawing his cheeks inward as the opossum drizzled precum freely over his tongue. The kitten's pursed lips kissed the opening of Belly's retracted sheath again and again as he bobbed his head, resting the barbed patch of his tongue just under the opossum's tip.
"Unh, hh..oh, f-fuck," Belly stammered, tapping on the back of Zach's head rapidly, which made Zach giggle a little as he doubled down, nuzzling into the ruff of soft, short pubic fluff on his opossum buddy as he ground the sandpapery patch of his tongue more firmly under the end of Belly's twitching boyhood.
"One," Kelly smirked to himself as he completed the green side of the Rubik's cube. There was a sharp draw of air from Zach through his nose, echoed by the same gasp from Belly as the opossum tensed and teetered for a split second. The door of the treehouse clattered open and closed again as Colin barged in.
"Guys, I found the perfect pumpkin!" Colin announced, before he had time to realize what was going on inside the treehouse.
"Boom!" Kelly broke out laughing at Colin's timing.
"Ngh-gah~! Haa!" Belly yelped in panicked surprise at the sudden burst of activity, his eyes wide and briefly locking on Colin's surprised expression as a thick squirt of slimy opossum semen spouted out across Zach's tongue. The cat purred like mad between eager swallows as he nuzzled into Belly's lap and giggled around the opossum while Belly pulsed cloudy-white squirts of spunk into his mouth, over and over. Colin stared at them hard for a moment, and Kelly laughed so hard he fell off the couch and rolled on the floor, breathless as he watched them get caught. Colin slowly allowed a wicked smirk to cross his face.
"I get that it's good news, but you might be overreacting a little bit, Belly," the raccoon teased, slugging Belly in the shoulder before flopping into the too-small spot on the couch beside him, wrapping an arm around the opossum's shoulders and watching Zach work in the opossum's lap as Belly rode out his climax with jerks and shudders and grunts. Zach milked Belly for every last drop he could muster before pulling up to swallow one last time, and Belly slouched between Zach and Colin for a long few moments, panting hard to catch his breath as his erection stuck up from his lap, still twitching in the air, glistening with cat saliva. Zach and Kelly both kept giggling in fits and starts as Colin laughed, and Belly just blushed as he pulled his shorts back up, tucking himself away with a satisfied grunt and an embarrassed grimace.


 
Chapter Five: Best Laid Plans



"Well, now that that's out of your system, maybe we can get to work?" Colin teased, still hugging Belly against his side as his friend came down from his climax. "Is this our design?" the raccoon asked, reaching for the cardboard tube resting on the makeshift table.
"Uh...yeah, I couldn't find anything worth carving in the book at the library, so, uh... I got a lead, and ended up talking to the guy that draws Arnie..." Belly mumbled, still a little nervous as Colin pulled the plug out of one end of the tube, then shook out the rolled piece of paper. As he unfurled it, Colin, Zach and Kelly all exclaimed as they revealed the heavy-lined, black-and-white picture of Arnie the Aardvark making a silly-scary vampire pose, complete with vampire fangs and a cape that made heavy use of negative space on the page. Bubble letters down the side of the design read "I <3 AVH" in the same font as the town's official merchandise. The barely-legible instructions in the corner of the page indicated to only cut out the black parts.
"What the...! No way, dude," Colin stared in awe. The others crowded around the poster-size page, marveling at it. "Shit, Belly. If I ever beef it, you're gonna be a fine leader for the crew."
"Don't joke about that, dude," Belly grimaced. He hated the idea of Colin ever not being around.
"Dude..! You got Arnie's actual artist?! For a quarter?" Kelly remarked, "That's so cool!"
"He uh, he didn't want the quarter," Belly admitted with a sheepish mumble. He dug in his shorts pocket and produced the silver coin that he put on the table. Colin picked it back up and tossed it in the treehouse's 'bank', an old cigar box that lived in a crook of the treehouse's walls.
"Great work, Belly! See?! No need to be a chicken-shit about going to the library! You're an ace!" Colin laughed, ruffling Belly's headfur. "It's even big enough! So, transport team!" Colin shifted his focus to the others as he rolled the poster-size drawing back up and stuffed it into the tube for safekeeping. "What do you guys got for us?"
"Oh, Pussycat came up with the idea to use Mrs. L's garden wagon. We just need to borrow it from her shed...and one of Mr. V's patio cushions for some padding so it doesn't get banged up," Kelly said, "Should be an easy operation from the logistics side, under the cover of darkness!"
"Uh, what G.I. Joe said," Zach giggled, before Kelly slugged him in the arm and Zach winced. "Ow, dude."
"Just paying out what's earned," the rat teased.
"Yeah? Well here's your change!" Zach slugged him back.
"Guys!" Colin barked. "We've got shit to do, quit screwing around. We've got a long night ahead of us. Can you walk yet, Belly?" Colin joked, and Belly gave his trademark grimace.
"I'm fine," the opossum said, "So what about this pumpkin?"
"Glad someone finally asked! You know the Montgomeries' farm?" Colin beamed, sitting up on the edge of the couch, obviously excited to hatch his plan. 
"Uh, yeah? They have alpacas in their petting zoo," Zach commented.
"Okay, rich kid," Colin teased Zach, who was the only one of their crew to have ever been bought admission to the Montgomeries' petting zoo. "They also have a secret pumpkin patch, with way better pumpkins than they have in the u-pick patch," the raccoon grinned. "I actually laid eyes on it myself - that's what took me so long. There's a perfect one and it should still be there tonight. You guys down to compromise a secure facility and extract a high value target?" Colin grinned. He loved playing along with Kelly's military fantasies, especially since it was the easiest way to get the others organized and on board.
"Dude, yeah! How can we identify the target?" Kelly asked, tossing the half-finished Rubik's cube into the crate.
"You'll know it when you see it, dude! It's about this high," Colin held a hand about belt-high, "And a little smaller around than the table. It'll probably take us all to move it, so we gotta' move smart. I already grabbed a saw from dad's camping stuff for the stem, we gotta' find something to carve it with too. Any ideas?"
"Uh, we could use a kitchen knife like normal kids..." Zach suggested.
"Nah, this thing's bound to be way tougher than a little pumpkin," Colin said. "We almost need like, a laser or something to cut it to get all the details," the raccoon puzzled.
"Will your dad let us borrow his tools?" Belly wondered. Colin shrugged.
"He knows we'll borrow them anyway, so yeah."
"We could use a survival saw," Kelly suggested, matter-of-factly. The others looked at him, confused.
"How is a saw going to do curves and corners and stuff?" Belly wondered. Kelly laughed and dug in the cargo pocket of his BDUs, pulling out a little metal tin.
"It's not a regular saw! It's like, made out of wire. If we got it through the pumpkin we could cut any shape we wanted," he said, opening the tin to rifle through the lockpicks and ferrite rods and fishing line to pull out the little loop of coarse wire that had thicker metal rings on either end to hold it by. "See? Get it through and then you can saw back and forth and follow the lines, or change direction or whatever..." Colin gawked.
"Dude, army kid wins again. That's perfect! Okay, so how do we get it through?" Colin puzzled next.
"Your dad's drill?" Zach wondered, and Colin rolled his eyes.
"He's still mad about last time we borrowed that. No power tools. Maybe like a hammer and a screwdriver though," Colin assessed...before shrugging. "Not worth thinking about 'til we have our pumpkin though," Colin said, glancing outside. The sky was getting dark already, thanks to the cloud cover that was slowly settling in over the setting sun. "Come on, let's get to work," Colin said as he stood up and made one final check of the treehouse before he opened the door and stepped out. The others followed, and soon split up to divide their tasks; Zach lead Colin to the perverted otter's trailer, next door to Zach's own trailer. Kelly and Belly teamed up to take on the more sensitive acquisition of the wagon.
Mrs. Leufschtagel's trailer was beside Colin's and Kelly's, in the back row of the little cul-de-sac of the trailer park. A messily-decorated yard with random flowers and wholly untamed shrubs and vining plants that had taken over the better part of the back of her trailer. The lights were on inside, but the boys knew every move of the trailer park; It was Friday night and after dinner-time, Mrs. L would be engrossed in her cable TV Friday Night Mystery movies, commercial-free and with the volume up so loud to supplement her failing hearing that the boys had plenty of acoustic cover under which to perform their operation.
Belly stood watch in the shadows beside the old squirrel woman's trailer, eyes through her sliding glass door on the living room, where he could just barely make out her slippered feet at the end of her recliner, sticking out from behind the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Belly flashed the thumbs-up to Kelly, who dug into his pocket for his ring of salvaged and scavenged padlock keys and started testing them in the padlock, sticking his tongue out between his lips in focus as he gingerly nestled each that would fit into the lock until one fully seated, turned effortlessly in the cylinder, and the lock popped undone. Kelly squeaked a near-silent signal to Belly who gave another check through the sliding glass window before he rushed across the back yard to help in the beam of flickering, reflected blue light from the television in the old woman's trailer.
Together, they eased the doors of the shed apart as silently as possible; with only the mildest audible rumble of the thin aluminum walls and a slight metallic scraping of an aluminum door through its frame as they urged the doors apart. Kelly dug in his pocket for a lighter and held it up inside, flicking the flint three times before the tiny flame ignited and cast a flickering yellow light into the shed. The two had to peer through the dark before they spotted it - not quite in the back but behind the lawnmower and trimmer.
They'd just begun to draw the wagon out of its corner in the shed when trapezoid of warm-white light abruptly projected out across the back yard through the back window, making both boys freeze in their tracks. Mrs. Leufschtagel was standing in front of her open refrigerator, the light from which cast the boys' covert operation into a seemingly-bright floodlight given their capacity for low-light vision. The two remained frozen in dumbfounded horror as she leaned down and picked a plate up out of the refrigerator. Then she closed the refrigerator door returning back to her seat, the boys remaining unseen. Both boys let out a relieved exhale as they hurried about extracting the wagon from the shed, and piled the other equipment back inside as quickly as they could before slipping the doors shut and hanging the lock from the handle again, leaving it unlocked. Just moments later, they were following the perimeter fence of the trailer park through the shadows to their predetermined meeting spot.
Colin and Zach were tasked with a much simpler acquisition, by comparison. As the two sneaked around Mr. V's trailer to his patio, Zach cast a wary peek over the edge of one of the living room windows, through the broken blinds of the middle-aged, single otter that lived in the trailer. As usual, the otter was in his dingy, dirty bathrobe, open in front and totally naked underneath. He had a porno tape playing; one of the thousands that he had hoarded on sagging, overloaded bookshelves throughout his entire house as Kelly could attest to, having browsed the shelves himself during one of his so-called reconnaissance missions. Zach looked to the TV where three red panda boys, probably two or three years younger than him, played naked on a large bed with a blanket pinned up as a backdrop to obscure the background. It was obviously a home movie that had been copied probably dozens of times, the fuzzy picture well worn and with occasional flickers where the tape had been worn from rewinds and long pauses. The boys were alternating between jerking off, jerking each other off, sword-fighting, talking to the cameraperson, squirting baby oil on each other, mounting each other and sucking each other off in a goofy, romping sort of way that reminded Zach of playing with some of his closer friends in the suburbs when he was really little. The otter was leaned back on his couch and jacking off as he watched them, looking drunk with lust as he alternated between polishing his thick, glossy, pink dick with purpose and holding himself in a tense stranglehold that made Zach guess he was trying not to cum.
The kitten giggled faintly as he rejoined Colin who was already reaching through the wooden railing to untie one of the patio chairs' cushions, and Zach simply hopped over the rail and started working on the cushion as well, in plain view of the sliding glass door that had curtains drawn over it.
"He's in his own world, dude, no way he'll catch us," Zach said as he helpfully untied the cushion and tossed it over the little wooden railing, then hopped over it, himself. "Even if we did get caught I think all I'd have to do is show him my pussy and he'd let us do whatever we wanted."
"Ha! He in there rubbin' off to little kids again? He's gonna be useful someday, I can feel it. Someone with a secret like that is the sort of person you can leverage, you know," Colin grinned as he conspired with Zach, while they carried the oversized cushion through the shadows and toward the entrance of the trailer park, where Kelly and Belly were already waiting for them.
"That was quick," Colin said, impressed as he tossed the cushion into the back of the wagon and urged the boys into motion along the shoulder of the highway to the country back-roads he'd just arrived from. After dark, there was little likelihood of catching a ride further out of town, and they'd definitely not be able to hitch back with a giant, stolen pumpkin in tow. 


 
Chapter Six: Of Mice and Men



The miles wore on quickly, until Colin veered off of the road and into the ditch behind the Montgomery farm's main fence, following his route from earlier. At the edge of the fence, he stopped to brief the others.
"Alright, so there's a long road through the fields. We stay on the edge of that and duck into the corn if we so much as hear or see anything alive, got it?" Colin asked, surveying the other three.
"Yeah," the others responded as the reality of their staged heist began to creep into their nerves.
"It's a pretty good walk. All the way behind their greenhouses, in the dry cornfields, way out behind the big house. If you stay in the cornfields and just keep going, it'll open up to the path, you'll see. We get in, we get the pumpkin up and we get out the same way we came in. But we're gonna' have to book it to keep from getting spotted. There's so many squirrels around here you never know where they might turn up," Colin warned. Kelly laughed.
"They're in the trees, man," the rat joked, mimicking his slightly-crazy grandpa who'd spent the late sixties in the army.
"Right!" Colin said, completely missing the reference, "Alright guys, we've got this. On three, cash is king! One-two-three..!"
"Cash is king!" The boys said in hushed unison, before immediately launching into action. The breach of the perimeter of the farm was surprisingly smooth; Zach and Kelly effortlessly slipped between the wooden fencing and took their side of the wagon as it was passed over the fence, and Colin and Belly followed quickly, squeezing themselves between the wooden rails of the farm fence as well. The boys crouched low and half-jogged as they towed the wagon over the coarsely-mowed grass at the edge of the u-pick patch, sticking close to the fields. A distant glow over the fields gave them a beacon for the big house, as did the sound of guitars and chatter; the Montgomery family's nightly barbecue and backyard social already in full swing just down the road. The boys hugged close to the cornfields to stay out of sight, before veering between the rows of corn and heading into the back fields.
From there, the going was slow and methodical; careful picking along the perimeter of the cornfields and eventually down in to the fields, once they were too close to the house to risk being seen. The wagon only barely fit between the dry cornstalks; Colin was going by his intuition and memory alone in the dark, as the wagon rattled on the uneven ground. When Colin took an abrupt left after a few more minutes of walking, their progress came to an immediate halt.
"Coll-boy, wait!" Belly hissed.
"Uh? Come on, guys, we gotta' hurry," Colin whispered back at them.
"The wagon won't fit!" Zach whispered. He and Kelly were both trying to wrestle it between the rows without making too much noise, but there was no way it would pass without mowing down at least one cornstalk with every row, and more likely two.
"Ssssshit, uh, okay," Colin puzzled, "...Let me scout ahead, you guys stay put and I'll come back and get you in a few minutes! Don't move!" The raccoon disappeared between the cornstalks and the faint rustling faded into the distance rapidly, leaving the three crouched low and anxious in the dark, overcast night under the cover of the dry corn. Despite their incredible night vision, it was hard to make much out in the low light, having to go only by what reflected this far in from the house's back yard, hundreds of feet away.
"Wait..!" Belly called, but it was too late. Anxiety welled in his gut, and he crouched nervously in the cornstalks as Kelly and Zach hunkered low beside him.
"Aw, it's no use, dude. He'll be back. You guys wanna hear a story?" Kelly asked. Zach's ears perked and he grinned.
"Dude, yeah!" the kitten urged, eagerly. Belly looked less enthusiastic.
"It's already freaky enough out here..." the opossum groaned. Kelly snickered.
"Dude, there's nothing to be scared of. It's just a cornfield. C'mon..."
"Fine," Belly sighed, exasperated. It'd help pass the time while Colin was off doing whatever it was that raccoons do in the dark.
"Yessss! There was once a man who lived in a cabin in the woods, way out in the country. He had a nice little place, a big garden, a little field of corn, and even a cow for milk. The cow made so much milk, that the man started making cheese in order to save it, and maybe even sell it in the market in town. His gardens made more than enough food, and if worse came to worse, he could always eat the grain he grew for his cow... But one night,"
"Oh, no," Belly groaned.
"But one night, the man heard rustling in his cornfield, and then the skritch, scratch, scratch in the walls of his cabin, and woke up to find his stores raided, vegetables gone, cheese devoured, not even crumbs left behind. The mice had gotten it all. Over and over again, he'd make cheese, he'd store his vegetables only to hear them come in the night, rustling in the corn, scratching in his walls, and he'd wake up to find it all devoured. His cow's grain stores were emptied, and the fields, too, with the cornstalks still standing. The cow went hungry, and he had to butcher her for meat to get by, but even that, the mice came for in the night, raiding his salt barrels. He grew to hate the mice, he hated the mice so much and wanted to really show them. So instead of saving his food, he started eating it all, as much as he could, and burning the rest. He made huge stews every night with all of the vegetables he could harvest from his garden. 'All for me, and the mice go hungry,' he said to himself as he licked the pot clean every night. He still heard the rustling in the fields, late at night, and the mice would come, and leave with empty stomachs.
"The man kept this up, he ate so much stew that he got big and fat, and still, every night the mice came, scratching around and rustling in the fields. He'd say, over and over, 'all for me, and the mice go hungry', he'd even shout it at the fields, blind with his hate for the mice. He was going crazy. Winter was coming, and the air was getting cool, and the nights long...and in the wee hours of the night that rustling in the fields would come again, and the scratching in his walls. Skritch - scratch - scratch. The one night, the fat man woke up to a tickle, and found a mouse nibbling at his lip. He slapped the mouse away, but suddenly, hundreds of mice started to pour out of the walls of the cabin..!"
"Ugh, dude..!" Belly complained, wringing his tail.
"Their eyes glinted in the dark, their teeth flashed like daggers in the moonlight, and in unison, they hissed, 'If you won't share the food, then you'll be our food!' and they tore the screaming man apart piece by piece and carried him in bits out into the cornfield, to fill their stores and fatten themselves up for the winter, and the man was never seen again. But sometimes, on fall nights, deep in dark cornfields, you can still hear the rustling of the mice in the corn, and the skittering, skritching scratches of their claws as they look for their next meal..." Kelly wiggled his fingers in a silly, spooky sort of way. Zach was just about to crack up as Belly's horrified expression was lit by the moonlight, until a rustling in the corn rapidly approached and all three boys were surprised, and clung to each other with a terrified gasp as Colin abruptly appeared between the rows.
"C'mon guys I found a tra-- .. What the fuck happened to you guys?" Colin immediately wondered as he saw the others' expressions, and their subsequent relief at seeing it was him. Colin's gaze immediately went to Belly thanks to the opossum's naive honesty.
"Kellogg told us a story," Belly mumbled with a hint of guilt at being scared. Colin laughed, as did Zach. Kelly just braced for what he knew was coming - a solid punch in the shoulder from Colin.
"I told you no more scaring Belly, man! He pees the bed when he has nightmares," Colin joked, as Kelly reeled and rubbed his shoulder.
"Hey! I haven't done that since I was Pussycat's age," Belly complained, louder than any of the boys would've liked.
"Shh-shut up, alright, let's get out of here. There's a trail across the rows if we just keep following them back," Colin whispered, urging the others into rapid motion down the row. The boys hurried along with the wagon for several hundred feet before they heard voices in the field and came to a standstill, just a few feet away from the trail that Colin had found. The voices were approaching, but sounded conversational and playful; laughing and joking back and forth. As they came closer Zach recognized one of his classmates, a little younger than himself, walking along with a female red squirrel. The two were arm-in-arm, playfully picking and teasing at each other as they chatted, and the boy's hands were roaming into intimate spots, groping her flat chest or sneaking squeezes of her butt. As they passed, a snippet of their conversation, rich in their familial dialect, was able to be overheard.
"...ease up! Leas' wait 'til we got there," the girl giggled in a teasing voice, prying the male red squirrel's hand away from her crotch.
"C'mooon, jus'a feel 'fore we get'ta' th'spot? Waiiidaminute. Who'yer gram?" the male squirrel wondered abruptly.
"Judy Kemper, Monty tree. Yers?" she asked, stopping near the four boys as they crouched in the cornfield just feet away, holding their breath.
"Sylvia Roman, Monty tree. Secon' cuz', yeah?" the male wondered.
"Uh, d'pend'n who's yer gran'dy," the female giggled, grabbing the male's paws as she urged him to hurry a bit faster along the path.
"Vic Monty?" the male said, questioning. The female giggled.
"'Eyy, 'as my gran'dy!" she laughed along with the male.
"Aw-yeh! We ain' proper firs'-firs' cousin, reck'n one n' half!" the male giggled, sounding even more energetic as he asked, "Y'wan' do-it-do-it then? Momma' said's no worry 'bout it n'less yer firs' cuz'." he said, giggling more as they walked into the distance.
"Yeh, a'right, s'long as th' gennleman make 'is lady..." the giggly female's voice faded into unintelligible murmurs in the cornfield as they walked down the narrow trail, and disappeared between the leaves. The boys held their breath for several moments longer as they stared at each other, before finally daring to exhale and breathe normally. Kelly stared at Colin and grinned a wicked grin. He hadn't broken out the nickname Mikey had coined for Colin in months, and the opportunity was too good.
"Coll-boy, look! More cousin-fuckers! You'd fit right in-AOw!" the rat squeaked as Colin punched him, hard, in the same spot he'd tagged him just minutes ago. Colin just flashed a briefly furious scowl at Kelly, before he tipped his head and ducked into the path as the squirrels disappeared around a curve. He led the group further across the rows, keeping low and ears all perked and attentive for the sound of approaching squirrels. Another two hundred feet, and Colin assessed their position relative to the glow of the house's lights over the field, and waved the others back into the fields, digging between the rows and leading the way as the others followed. Colin was moving fast, but the smaller boys had little issue following his pace as Belly kept on his tail, and Kelly towed the wagon with Zach pushing on the back of it to help keep up over the uneven terrain.
Abruptly, the boys found themselves in a wide-open, grassy clearing. Colin made a straight line for his pumpkin as he spotted it in the cluster of huge, orange globes in the moonlight, and the other boys followed him over as the raccoon started rapidly sawing at the stem. The other boys gathered around and gawked at the massive pumpkin.
"Woah..!" Belly marveled with whispers, "It's huge!"
"Hmm!"
"That's what Pussycat said," Colin joked, Kelly giggled, as did Zach. "C'mon, get the wagon up beside it, we're gonna have to all work together to lift it in," the raccoon whispered.
"Hmmm!"
"What're you thinking, dude?" Zach asked Kelly. Kelly looked back at Zach.
"I thought that was you? Belly?" Kelly looked to Belly, as did Zach. Belly was frozen; his eyes were wide, his jaw half-agape, baring his needle-teeth. They knew it well, it wasn't the usual 'chicken-shit' Belly face, it was the 'actually scared' Belly face. He was staring across the pumpkin, up between Zach and Kelly who had gathered on the side opposite him and Colin.
"Hm..!"
"Got it!" Colin barked quietly as the stem finally snapped. He folded the saw and stuffed it back in his pocket. "Huh?" Colin wondered at the opossum's expression, before he glanced across the pumpkin to the other boys. "...Oh, shit!" Colin's eyes widened as he caught what Belly was staring at. Zach and Kelly looked to each other, before looking over their shoulders.
There, silhouetted against the cloud-covered moon behind them, stood their long-necked, wooly-black-furred doom. Frank, the Montgomery family's roaming guard-alpaca; five feet of ill-tempered muscle that honored no treaties and took no bribes. Impossible to contain, and even tougher to evade, the alpaca reared up and started throwing forehooves at the boys, pummeling Kelly and Zach who quickly twisted out of the way and ran in opposite directions.
"Shit! What the fuck is that?!" Kelly shouted as Frank chased him around the clearing, rearing up and throwing more hooves any time the rat would stop long enough to try and figure out what to do. Zach tried to play interference to save his friend, but only found himself subject to the same abuse as the alpaca let out a battle-cry akin to a squeaky-toy.
"Guys, shut up!" Colin barked, but it was too late. Distant calls and shouts were already sounding from the Montgomery family's backyard gathering just a couple hundred feet away. "Fuck, shit, hurry up and help pick this thing up, we gotta bail! Belly, snap out of it!" Colin snapped as he smacked the back of Belly's head, seemingly resetting the opossum who reanimated nearly instantly, and after getting his bearings, started hastily working with the raccoon to try and leverage the massive pumpkin into the wagon. "Guys!" Colin snapped at Kelly and Zach who were desperately trying to outrun the alpaca in circles around the pumpkin patch.
The rat and cat boys did their best to get a substantial enough lead on the alpaca, but as they both scampered back to the pumpkin Frank was atop them before they were able to find handholds, pummeling at their backs again. Colin swiped a hand out and clapped the alpaca across the snout, which made it snort and belt out its furious squeaky-toy war cry again, but it bought them the unmolested second they needed.
"HEAVE!" Colin urged, and all four boys hefted the massive pumpkin like an Atlas stone, leveraging it up with strained grunts as the alpaca reared up again and pummeled Zach's back with his hooves. Only with great effort did the boys tip the massive pumpkin atop the cushion in the wagon where it settled upside-down between the rails with a rough thump.
"Ah, fuck off!" Zach squeaked, trying to fend off the alpaca as the shouting grew closer, along the path that led to that clearing. Flashlights glinted between the cornrows; the Montgomeries were getting close.
"Cheese it!" Kelly shouted, grabbing the yoke of the wagon and pulling, as Colin and Belly pushed and heaved it into motion between the cornrows. "C'mon Pussycat!"
The calico kitten scampered after them as the boys disappeared into the corn, the alpaca hot on their tails. As Zach caught up to the wagon, he pushed hard and urged it up to a running pace as the other boys helped push and pull it. 
"You guys get back to that trail and take a right and BOOK IT as far as you can, I'll buy you time!" Colin said, urging them on as he stopped to face Frank, standing as tall as he could. Colin knew that while he wasn't particularly large, he could be fierce if he had to be; same as any raccoon. The alpaca came nose-to-nose with him and reared up, and Colin caught his forehooves, pushing the alpaca back, and handily toppling Frank directly into the chest of a grown-up red squirrel that was in a full run down the row behind the alpaca, bowling them both over. Colin stole in the opposite direction, running at a full tilt.
"Sum'bitch took mah fuggin' prize punkin!" an enraged voice howled from the clearing a moment later, as Colin rushed the wagon and caught up with the others. Kelly was pulling at the wagon's yoke, running backwards as fast as he could, as Belly and Zach steadied the pumpkin on the back of the wagon and pushed as they ran alongside it. Colin plunged in from behind and started pushing as Kelly pulled the wagon's yoke, and they ran through the tiny trail in the cornfield that, after another hundred yards, opened to a different clearing. It was smaller, and an old, broken-down farm truck was overgrown with weeds at its center. The windows were steamed up and a squirrel's hand was pressed against the driver's side window, a foot smearing streaks across the fogged-up windshield as the boys rushed past and straight into the cornfields beyond, bee-lining for the distant perimeter of the farm.
"Split up!" Colin suddenly announced as they'd made it through twenty or thirty rows of corn, mowing their own trail now with the help of the wagon to plow down the cornstalks. "Take the pumpkin out to the orchard and get into the woods," Colin directed the others, urging the wagon to turn and head down a row of corn. "Head for home, I'll meet you in the treehouse if I don't catch you on the way!"
The other boys assented, wheeling their huge, heavy payload on its wagon between the corn rows, slowing down to increase their stealth more as Colin uprooted two cornstalks and held them horizontal, using them to mow down and disrupt more cornstalks to - hopefully - make an obvious trail that would bait the Montgomeries into chasing him instead of following their actual target.
Belly took his turn to tow the wagon, huffing and puffing as the other boys pushed behind him. The cornfield began to open up in front of him and he slowed, sticking his head cautiously out onto the path that stretched along the u-pick orchard and pumpkin patch with a nervous grimace as he looked left, then right. It was quiet, but there was no telling for how long it would stay that way. He thought quick.
"Uh...help me turn this thing, let's stay in the corn until we get to the fence," he hissed a whisper, and the others agreed. It took all three of them hauling on the yoke of the wagon in spite of its wide tires to get it to turn, and they all had to strain to get it back up to a steady speed as they heaved and shoved it across the corn rows at great effort, thanks to the required push to mow down cornstalks along the way. While the wagon was manageable, it would've been much easier going if Colin were there to help. As they got back in motion however, the momentum helped keep it going, and soon they were making good time toward the old wooden farm fence as shouting and cursing grew more distant in the fields.
The cornfield abruptly ended, six feet from the wooden-rail fence that ran the perimeter of the Montgomery farm. The weathered fence was old, but sturdy, and as the boys sized up the slats they realized there was no way the wagon would fit through, with or without the pumpkin on top. Zach smacked his palm to his forehead.
"Duh! We couldn't even get the wagon in, remember? We picked it up!" he groaned in dismay. Kelly fretted for a minute and tried pushing on a fence post which stood firm; though when he tried the same on one of the cross rails it had some give.
"Dude, look! It's loose, here! Help me out!" Kelly said, trying to pry the crossmember away from the post with little luck, even as Belly and Zach struggled along with him.
"Shit, what do we do?!" Zach said, panic growing in his voice. Belly was thinking hard and fast; he was, officially, in charge without Colin present; the chain of command had always been clear, but Belly struggled to think anywhere near as quick as their raccoon mastermind.
"Uh... Wait, trampoline! Get up here, guys!" Belly said, as an idea came to him. He stepped onto the middle cross-rail of the fence and stood there, and as Kelly and Zach stood beside him and braced their hands on the top rail of the fence, Belly gave a testing bounce, which showed that under the weight of the three boys the wooden beam had a surprising amount of give to it. "Alright, big bounce on three! One!" Belly bounced, as did the other boys, setting a pendulum-like spring in the weathered old wood. "Two!" a deeper bounce with more pressure that elicited a threatening crack from the beam. "Three!"
As the boys all lunged against the fence's rail with their full weight, it cracked again and collapsed, splitting down the center and hitting the ground, sending Belly and Kelly sprawling as Zach hung onto the top post of the fence and scrambled a bit to land on his feet.
"Dude, it worked!" Zach said, rushing to pull the broken fence rail out of the way as the other boys got up and dusted themselves off, then grabbed the wagon. Less than a minute later they'd made their escape, and had gotten deep enough into the woods that the fields were no longer visible, with no sign of pursuit as they wheeled the wagon through the undergrowth despite occasionally having to wrestle it over fallen limbs and other detritus on their way to the train tracks.
Once they emerged into the old, rural dirt-track access road beside the railroad tracks, the boys made their way at a slow but steady pace toward town again, winded and banged up, bleeding from fresh scrapes in the cornfields and from the alpaca attack. The wagon had taken a similarly rough beating from the rough terrain and treatment, its wheels wobbling and one threatening to drag occasionally as they pulled it along.


 
Chapter Seven: Homework



It was well after midnight before the boys simultaneously collapsed into the tarp-covered couch in the treehouse, too weary from their ordeal and the long walk with a heavy load to even lift the pumpkin onto their spool table inside. Colin had rejoined the gang and done the lion's share of the pulling on the way home, but eventually they had to trade off a few times as fatigue started setting in. Kelly was struggling to light their lone lantern, but as the flame finally took, it cast feeble, flickering yellow light on the exhausted boys. Zach was already almost asleep against Colin's side, and Belly was quickly on his way to the same against Colin's opposite shoulder. Colin just had his head laid back and was catching his breath, but looking ready to drop, himself.
"Wake up, guys! We still have to carve this thing and get it to the park before ten in the morning!" Kelly hissed at them all, "I didn't just get my ass kicked by an alpaca for nothing!" Colin laughed.
"I'm awake, dude, I'm awake...uh, just resting my eyes. Wake up, dorks, you're pinning me down," Colin elbowed Belly and Zach both in the sides, stirring the drowsy boys back awake and jostling them until they fended him off of them. "There, see? Good as new. Good nap, guys?" 
"I wasn't sleeping," the kitten mumbled in a voice that implied heavily that he was, indeed, sleeping.
"Me either," Belly said, before giving a wide yawn.
"Good, then you can help haul this stupid pumpkin up onto the table," the raccoon urged the others, who groaned in weary protest, but moved to help. The second lift of the evening did not come as easily as the first, especially thanks to the first's adrenaline-fueled urgency, but after a couple tries and some careful positioning, they managed to wrestle the massive pumpkin onto the spool and into position to be worked on. Colin dug into the toolbox he'd lifted from his dad's shed on their way in.
"I guess the first thing is to hollow it out," Colin assessed, rummaging through tools. He found a claw hammer, and a sturdy old screwdriver that he used as a makeshift chisel. "We can work in shifts if you guys wanna get a breather while we get this thing open."
"Sounds good to me," Belly said, having already curled up against the armrest of the couch in his usual sleeping spot. Zach leaned in against him and yawned a wide yawn.
"Yeah, just let us know..." Zach said, resting his head on Belly's hip and curling up with the opossum. Soon, Colin and Kelly were working on their own, Colin wielding the hammer with firm, decisive blows as Kelly warily held the screwdriver as they chiseled their way around the top of the pumpkin, then pried it open with a wet crack as the smell of raw pumpkin filled the air in the tiny treehouse. Colin wrinkled his nose at the pumpkin slime hanging from the newly-carved 'lid', soon assessing that this would be a very messy, disgusting job given the size of the pumpkin.
"Ugh. Mistakes were made, dude," Colin laughed to Kelly as the rat made a face at the stringy, seed-laden goop hanging from the stem-hat of the pumpkin. "Uh, roll that wagon over, we can use it to haul the guts out into the woods to dump them," he grimaced, as he hunted for another tool in the toolbox.
It took nearly a half hour for the boys to fully commit to cleaning out the pumpkin with what tools they had, but once they stripped their shirts off and committed to getting absolutely gross, it only took a further hour for them to scrape the interior of the pumpkin clean of pumpkin-guts and seeds using the putty knife Colin managed to find in his dad's tool box. The wagon was covered in a heaping mound of pumpkin slime, and as the boys finally decided the pumpkin was clean enough, they worked together to heave the wagon out into the woods and dump its contents, thankful to be rid of a significant portion of the pumpkin's weight as they wheeled the slimy wagon to the back of Colin's trailer, and used his garden hose to clean themselves up as well as the wagon, as best they could without waking anyone up.
As they got back to the treehouse, Colin kicked the couch, before he flopped roughly onto it beside Zach, who started awake along with Belly, bleary-eyed and confused, before he slowly got his bearings.
"Wuh? ...you guys are done already?" Zach mumbled. Belly just rubbed at his eyes and sat up without much question, looking to the table where the hollowed-out pumpkin stood proudly, its lid upside-down beside it.
"Ugh, it stinks like pumpkin slime in here.." Belly mumbled, wrinkling his nose. Colin ruffled his headfur.
"Yeah, thanks to your bro's sacrifice. You guys' turn to carve it," Colin yawned, "Kellogg, show 'em how the thing works when they're ready," Colin yawned, slumping over to curl up where Zach and Belly were still trying to wake back up, bodily forcing them out of the spot and to their feet as Colin nestled in to catch some shut-eye. 
"Jeez, dude..!" Zach giggled as he was crowded out of the couch. Belly simply stood, far too used to Colin's hijinks at this point; he didn't even acknowledge them as he stretched and scratched at his stomach. He took the cue from the shirtless rat and raccoon and pulled his own t-shirt off as he surveyed the pumpkin, then carefully unfurled the drawing from its protective tube. Zach tugged his own shirt off as well and tossed it into the pile of them hanging across the windowsill, as Kelly climbed up the back of the couch, hopped into their recently-added hammock in the ceiling of the treehouse and shuffled his pants down so he could sprawl out in just his tightie-whities.
"Ugh. No going back once we start this, dude," Belly grimaced as he looked at the drawing, and Zach walked around the table to try to find the best side of the pumpkin for them to work on.
"It'll be fine, man; it's easy," Zach reassured the opossum, squinting as he sussed out a side of the pumpkin that was relatively flat. 
"I know, I just hate the idea of tearing up a cool drawing just to carve up a pumpkin," Belly mumbled. Zach pinned his ears. 
"Awww. The guy knew what you were gonna use it for though, yeah? I'm sure he'd understand," the kitten reassured Belly. "C'mon, here, I'll show you how it works. Hold it up here." 
After Zach coached Belly through the process, the pair spent the next hour and a half transferring the design over, using an awl from Colin's dad's toolbox to punch through the paper design to transfer an outline of the areas that needed cutting out, before they scribbled marker on those areas on the pumpkin itself to clearly indicate the parts that needed to go. 
Once satisfied that they hadn't missed anything in the pattern, Belly rolled the drawing back up and stuffed it in the tube, and Zach climbed up and poked at the rat's bare-furred back through the holes in the hammock.
"Kellogg! Wake up!" Zach called, urging the rat into motion with a playful prodding of his sharp claw against Kelly's briefs-clad backside, hooking the knitted cotton and plucking at it.
"Mmnh, huh? You guys are ready already? It's only been a few minutes," Kelly mumbled, stirring after a moment. Zach kept playfully prodding at him.
"It's been more than an hour, I think. We need you to show us how the saw works!" Zach urged him. Kelly stirred and sat up, digging into the pocket of his BDUs for his survival kit, and once it was retrieved, he held out the survival saw for the other boys. Belly stopped fretting as much as he took the tool in his hands and examined it, while Kelly climbed down to show them how it worked. The rat helped them bore a starter hole and thread the saw through, before coaching them through using it to carve out the first small shape. It went surprisingly quickly with the specialized tool, and despite requiring the boys to have one arm armpit-deep in the pumpkin, the boys found they could work surprisingly effectively solo, and trade off the carving duty as they fatigued from sawing.

Colin stirred as the chirping of the birds in the woods grew too loud to continue ignoring, scratching his bare stomach and digging a hand down into his shorts to adjust his aching morning wood that was bent in a manner that threatened the integrity of its supporting bone. He stretched and his foot collided with another warm body, and Colin looked down as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
Belly was laid back, foot-to-foot with Colin on the couch, with Zach straddling his lap. Belly's shorts and underwear were down to his mid-thighs, and Zach was stark naked. From Colin's vantage point, he could see everything; Zach's plump little kitten pussy was still wrapped around the midpoint of Belly's flaccid member, though they both seemed fast asleep. It was obvious that they hadn't even finished what they started, by the looks of things; a miracle by Colin's estimation and a sure sign of their absolute exhaustion, given that Belly wasn't exactly known for having stamina enough to leave unfinished business. Zach was cozily laid against Belly's chest with his face buried in the opossum's throat as Belly loosely held an arm around Zach's middle. It wasn't the first time Colin had caught them cuddled up in this sort of way in the morning, but it was still a sight that made him smile a little with satisfaction, happy that the two were so close. Happy for Belly, especially, since the opossum kid deserved some real love in his life.
The raccoon's attention turned toward the pumpkin as he carefully sat up and stretched his arms over his head, yawning again. It stood proud on the top of the spool table, with carved-out chunks of the pumpkin laid all around it, though Colin couldn't see the carved side until he stood up. When he circled to that side of the pumpkin though, he stared in awe at what he saw.
The carving was incredible! Their lantern had been placed into the center of the pumpkin, but had long-since run out of fuel. There were a few spots that the lines had overrun their bounds and gotten slightly out of shape, but generally it looked like the other boys did an exceptional job. Colin could see well enough from the carving's quality that they were sure to be strong contenders in the competition. 
Shit, the competition!
Colin rushed to the old Casio digital watch that hung by its broken band on a nail beside the door and checked the time. It was a quarter to nine, leaving them just over an hour to get into town and check in for the competition.
"Guys! Get up!" Colin called; it was urgent, but not a barked order. He shook the hammock that Kelly was sprawled in his underwear in, then kicked the couch a few times to jostle Belly and Zach awake despite their precarious position. Kelly started awake and yawned, rolling over in his hammock and pinning his own morning wood against the mesh as he looked down from between the netting. 
"Mm-nh? What's up, Coll-boy?" the rat mumbled, stretching again and cracking his knuckles as his toes and tail curled. Zach squirmed and pushed himself up in Belly's lap, giggling faintly and gasping as he worked his hips, realizing the motion sunk Belly right back home. Belly yawned and arched his back as he stretched, then shuddered bodily as he woke enough to register Zach squeezing around his quickly swelling erection.
"Ngghaa, uh- P-pussycat, dude;" Belly mumbled, grasping the kitten's waist as Zach giggled and squirmed his hips. The opossum's eyes crossed and he arched again, toes curling.
"Quit screwing around, guys," Colin teased, "We gotta' get this thing to the park before they close the entries!" 
"Aw, c'mon Coll-boy," Zach giggled, purring already as he pushed Belly back and slowly rose and fell, gliding himself over Belly as the opossum gritted his teeth and huffed. "Belly's so hard, can I finish him off first so he doesn't get blueballs?" the kitten giggled.
Colin thought. It only took a half hour to walk to the park. Add ten minutes for any trouble they might have with their stolen wagon that was seemingly on its last leg. Plus a few minutes' cushion to steal a box of pop-tarts for the gang's breakfast from his house. It was doable, he thought; especially since his own persistent erection was nagging at him still.
"Fifteen minutes, but you have to do us all," Colin challenged Zach, who giggled at the direction.
"Deal, dude!" he quipped, settling back on Belly and churning his hips in a slow circle as he soaked Belly to the hilt and purred like mad.
"Fuck yeah!" Kelly giggled, shifting in the hammock and playfully fishing his own erection out from the fly of his underwear, before pushing it between the webbing of the hammock's netting to dangle it down over Zach's head. The kitten giggled as he saw that, and reached up to wrap his hand around the rat's erection, feeling it throb eagerly as he gave it a gentle squeeze between his soft pawpads. Zach stretched upward, lifting just a little off of Belly as he stretched to lip and suckle the very end of the rat's member.
Zach tested his stretch, and began to alternate between grinding down against Belly's, causing the opossum to grunt and moan out hotly as he watched the kitten playing with the rat's erection, stretching to suckle it off and on as he slowly rode the opossum. Belly welcomed the distraction, his grip remaining on Zach's thigh, tensing whenever he came close, which signaled for the kitten to slip right up and off of him and gulp Kelly's member down deeper for a few moments, until the opossum cooled off slightly. Colin crowded in, sitting on the back of the couch after dropping his pants, spreading his legs wide to show off his aggressively curved member that Zach eagerly handled, wrapping his free hand around the raccoon as Colin rested his arms in Kelly's hammock and drummed a few thumps of his palms across the rat's underwear-clad backside, making the other boys laugh a little.
"NOT helping, Coll-boy! Bad enough I gotta try to get off with you creeps so close by," Kelly chided Colin, laughing a little bit. Belly giggled a bit dazedly, but didn't comment on his vantage point of two of his buddies' dicks along with his sweet, gay, intersexed kitten friend that was so expertly grinding in his lap, making him tense again.
"Yeah, try it from my side, dork," Colin teased Kelly, "My view is either your dick getting sucked or your ass. You got a hole in your underwear," Colin observed, poking his finger through it and prodding his claw at the rat's rump-cheek. Colin was quickly distracted however, andgasped as Zach leaned over into his lap. It was an effortless movement from the kitten that suckled down half of the raccoon's erection, making Colin arch his hips forward as Zach took a few eager bobs before pulling off and using his saliva as lube to stroke the raccoon with as Colin gave an approving little groan.
"You guys are such nerds, you should try messing with each other so I don't have to do all the work all the time," Zach teased with a giggle, before he lifted up off of Belly as the opossum gave an unsteady little moan, and buried his nose against the rat's pubic bone through the bottom of the hammock, swallowing around Kelly so deeply that the rat squeaked and gripped his fingers through the netting of the hammock with an eager groan, trying to grind further down.
"Hey, if you don't wanna play with it, I can handle myself," Colin said, knowing Zach far better than that already. He playfully pulled himself out of the cat's grip and stroked himself, and Zach whined around Kelly before pulling off the rat and stroking him again as he grabbed at Colin's cock.
"I didn't say that! C'mere, you!" Zach giggled, and the kitten buried his face in Colin's lap again, sucking firmly around the raccoon and sighing deeply into his crotchfur as he worked himself on Belly with a few slow churns, shivering. Zach was getting close, too; and Belly was raking his claws into his thighs; the opossum was always kind of close, but Zach knew fully well that he was teetering, at this point. The boys worked in panting silence for a few moments as Colin ground his hips forward and plunged a few smooth thrusts into Zach's mouth, and Kelly arched into the kitten's eager handjob, gasping.
"Ah- fuck!" came the first climactic cry as Kelly surrendered to the kitten's grip, and launched a hot spurt of runny rat seed across the kitten's shoulder and pec, the excess dripping and spurting straight down onto Belly's stomach and eliciting a whine of protest from the opossum.
"Aw, Kellogg! Watch where you're flinging that shit, you're- ah, nnh!" Belly whined, abruptly cut off as Zach trembled and sat fully in his lap. The kitten shuddered and ground down hard, and as Zach peaked with his mouth sealed around Colin's cock, his walls milked Belly's boyhood powerfully. The opossum was no match, despite his playful disgust at the warm, runny spurts of rat-cum spattering on his stomach or the watery, oozing spurts of semen from the intersexed boy's climax pooling in his pubic fur and around his own member. The fluttering, milking pulls of the intersexed boy's strong climactic contractions brought Belly easily over the edge, and a powerful shot of ivory-marbled opossum seed pulsed straight to the back wall of Zach's insides, setting off another flurry of contractions around him to help ensure that first spurt was followed by five more in rapid succession. Belly grunted, eyes rolled back in his head and he dug his claws into Zach's thighs and convulsed beneath the kitten.
Colin panted and laughed a little, lowering his hand to rub Zach's ear with an urgent, guiding pull as the raccoon tensed, oozing thick, salty slickness from his crooked tip.
"Ah, don't stop now, Pussycat," Colin urged, biting his lip as he drew close. Zach's eyes opened and darted up to Colin's as he bobbed his head, employing a little secret knowledge he had over the slower-burning raccoon that had been tested over the last several weeks. Eye contact always worked for Colin. Always. Zach could see the raccoon's expression change, softening with each eager, suckling bob of his head as Colin's eyes locked on Zach's until the raccoon sucked a breath through his teeth and squinted, nearly hiding his eyes in his mask. The raccoon's core tensed sharply, jerking slightly with each hot spurt of the raccoon's rich seed that darted across Zach's tongue, sending a thrill up the kitten's spine as he slowed his bobbing and suckled on the raccoon's pulsing glans as Colin gave a low, gruff noise as he relaxed on the trailing end of his climax, the older boy's greater volume and more potent taste making the kitten swoon in ecstasy.
The treehouse grew quiet, save for eager panting from four boys and a few shaky, shuddery vocalizations of overstimulated pleasure as Zach teased and toyed with his friends. A few minutes later, and the wristwatch's timer beeped and re-centered the kids' post-nut clarity on their task.


 
Chapter Eight: Asset Conversion



The wagon rattled and rumbled down the access road beside the railroad tracks as the kids handed off towing duty between devouring packs of cold pop-tarts, all the boys ravenously hungry after having skipped dinner the night before and pulling an all-nighter. The going was much easier than the rougher terrain they'd covered the night before, but the banged-up wagon was in less than ideal condition for towing and the wheels rattled loosely on their axles along the dusty gravel road. Colin had come up with the idea to keep a low profile by wrapping the pumpkin up in the tarp from the couch to hide it from view, in case the Montgomeries were out and looking for it still - a consideration none of the other boys had even thought about until Colin brought it up. It was quickly a topic of dreadful concern for the opossum, who shrunk away from about everything that invoked even the idea of the Montgomeries' signature rusty-red fur as the boys zigged and zagged through the side-streets toward the park.
The town park was bustling with activity, and seemingly had been for some time already in spite of the early hour. There were vendors setting up canopies in the parking lot, and people were milling around the park with festive energy as the kids wheeled their pumpkin up to the bandstand and looked around for someone who looked official. Zach spotted another pumpkin getting checked in, and hurried the gang over.
"Excuse me..!" the kitten said, flashing his best, sweetest smile; he was the second-best con in the group and whole group had assessed that his younger appearance would probably get them further, faster. "Me and my friends wanted to enter our pumpkin in the competition, please!"
The middle-aged, white-furred lioness looked down at the four boys through her glasses as she penned another line into her clipboard.
"Okay, entering as a group I assume? Who's name should I put it under?" she asked, sounding a bit stiff and grown-up. Zach fidgeted a little under her gaze, but smiled in the most charming manner he could.
"Yes, please! Uhhh. Cash is King!" Zach said. Colin gave a proud grin at that.
"Sorry, name's taken," the lioness said, tipping the back of her pen toward the lined up pumpkins on display, where a crowned, dollar-sign-eyed smiley-face logo of the local check cashing joint was proudly emblazoned on one of the pumpkins.
"Aw, that's so lame!" Kelly blurted in protest. Colin quickly shut him up.
"Uhhh, the Treehouse Gang?" Zach said, almost questioning. Colin didn't like using their 'official' name for anything with a paper trail, but there was always exceptions.
"No gangs. C'mon, kids; we've gotta keep this moving, the entires are going to close any minute."
"What?!" Kelly started in outrage before he caught Colin's severe stare, which silenced him again.
"The Fallow Acres Four," Belly spoke up from the back of the group.
"Yeah, that!" Colin and Zach said in unison.
"O-kay, if you kids say so," the lioness said, penning more onto her clipboard, "No profanity, no obscene images?" the lioness asked, glancing toward the covered pumpkin. The boys all shook their heads, and she lifted a brow for a long beat, before penning one last bit onto the page. She split a tag, offering one half to Zach. It had numbers on it. "You take this half, and don't lose it. If you win this is how you claim your prize. We'll keep the pumpkins up on display through Halloween, too. This half is a sticker that's got the same numbers - that goes on the back of your pumpkin. Put it on there and make sure it sticks good. If the sticker falls off you can't win. Then put your pumpkin up on the bandstand with the rest of them."
"Awesome! Thank you!" Zach said with a beaming smile as he hurried to the others and busily buffed a spot on the back of the pumpkin clean, then stuck the sticker to it, rubbing it down to make sure it was stuck tight. The boys rushed over to the bandstand, where dozens of other contestants' pumpkins had already been lined up. As they wheeled the wagon down the sidewalk in front of the bandstand, the boys could tell they'd be up against some strong competition; there was a large variance, from super clean carvings of local companies' logos to basic triangle-eyed pumpkins carved by local kids, and a few more original designs that rivaled their own in both intricacy and quality, though on inferior pumpkins to their own by Colin's keen-eyed assessment.
There were some outliers like theirs, though. High quality pumpkins and some artistic approaches that Colin wished they'd even thought of, where the carvers had used their carved-out pumpkin shapes to add layers inside the pumpkin to give more of a sense of depth. It was going to be tough to beat, but the raccoon remained hopeful since the designs all seemed kind of boring and more like advertising than real grass-roots efforts.
"I think we're a shoe-in, guys," Colin said as they approached the end of the bandstand.
"I hope so," Belly mumbled, "If it doesn't pay off at least we got to have a sleepover though," the opossum said as Colin climbed up onto the high ledge, then hefted Zach up with him. Belly stayed below and, with Kelly, worked to heft the tarp-covered pumpkin halfway up to where Colin and Zach could grab it. As they hauled it the rest of the way up the boys worked together to wrestle it into position, facing out toward the park. Colin pulled the tarp away and tossed it down to Belly, then hopped off the ledge with Zach and started folding it up.
They almost didn't notice it over the rustling of the tarp, but as it was tucked away back in the wagon, the low murmur of the few impressed sounds from the gathering crowd reassured Colin further, and he smacked Belly on the back as they took up their post with the crowd to wait for the judges.
"Good work, guys. No matter what happens, you guys nailed it," Colin grinned as he beheld the pumpkin in the row of others. It stood out prominently among them; larger, more shapely, more unique than any of the others. It was out of their hands now, but they'd given it the best possible run they could. The other boys sat in the grass with Colin and anxiously waited for the judging.
Zach reached across Colin's back and pinched a tender spot on Kelly's side, who squeaked in alarm.
"Ow, fuck! I'm gonna get you, you inside-out litter-shitter!" the rat barked as he dove across Colin to get at the kitten who recoiled and ran for it.

Hours passed, the boys having eventually climbed to the top of the monkey bars to watch from the playground on the other side of the park as the judges walked up and down the row of pumpkins, discussing amongst themselves and going back for second and third looks and reviews as the boys anxiously awaited the results. Once a nicely-dressed man in a silly pumpkin hat took the stage and started messing with a microphone, the boys jumped down and ran back into the loosely-gathered crowd, pushing their way to the front as they wheeled the clattering wagon behind them.
"Is this thing o- oh, it is. Good! Hello everyone!" the charismatic, fat golden retriever called as he regarded the crowd from the bandstand, over a tinny P.A. system. "I am so happy to see such a great turnout to the first annual Aardvark Heights Spooky Saturday! Give yourselves a hand!" he laughed, tucking the mic under his arm to join with the scattered applause.
"It really is refreshing to see the community spirit so strong," he continued, "Let's have another round of applause to thank all of the volunteers, judges, and our vendors for showing up and helping make this event go off so smoothly, its their contributions that really show us all what a wonderful place this is to live," the golden retriever said with another charismatic smile. There was more scattered applause.
"Now, before we announce the winners of the pumpkin carving competition, we'd like to take a moment to appreciate everyone's creativity and community spirit on display; we've gotten some wonderful entries and our judges had a really tough time finding their favorites! Let's give it up for all of our pumpkin carvers!" Surprising the boys, there was a bit more applause at that, and they joined in as well, since, well, they were basically applauding themselves and their friends at this point.
"Alright! So here's how this works; if you win, you can come up to Mrs. Pridemore," the dog gestured toward the glasses-wearing lioness, "after we're done with the announcements to claim your prize! Now, without any further pomp or circumstance--"
"Finally!" a voice called from the crowd, to scattered chuckles.
"Hey! I'm a politician, I'm supposed to ramble!" the golden retriever laughed, pointing at the heckler as he broke the seal and flipped open an official-looking envelope from his pocket. "Now - The results! For the third place prize - a lovely gift basket full of absolutely wonderful products donated by our local businesses - an absolutely endearing twist on pumpkin carving that captures the joy of play and imagination, carved by Gina and Kevin Pe- uh, Peat-ower--?"
"Petaur!" a younger-teenaged sugar glider girl shouted from the crowd, as a couple attendants lifted the indicated pumpkin up to the winner's podium. It was a pumpkin that had been carved through so thoroughly and intricately that it resembled lace, but in the shapes of of toys and stars and moons all around.
"There it is! Gina and Kevin P, ladies and gentlemen! Well done!" the golden retriever laughed, applauding as he held the mic in one hand, causing a shriek of feedback from the speakers that saw the whole crowd wince as hundreds of ears pinned on reflex.
"Woah! Running a little hot there, sorry folks! Give it up for our third-place winners!" he called, with a big beaming smile. "Now, taking second place, for a season pass offered by our own Parks and Recreation department which will grant their team access to to all Aardvark Heights athletics and recreation facilities," the dog said, really trying to sell its value as a couple mocking 'ooooOOoohs' rose from the crowd, "The Midnight Marauders and their wonderful carving of the Nightshade Hill House; the long-standing historic site and subject of at least a few of our rich urban legends," the dog chuckled, pausing for applause again, which came a little more soundly as the four-person team rose out of the crowd with some loud and excited hyena-whoops, followed by rabbit-voiced mimicry of the same. The gang recognized Dom immediately, though the female hyena and two rabbits were only tangentially known by way of the gang going to school with them.
"Well done, well done!" the dog laughed into the mic. Colin leaned in, as did the others, as they anticipated the next announcement. "Before we get on to the grand prize, we have one additional prize to announce first - our community spirit award! This award goes to the pumpkin and team that we feel truly captures the proud spirit of Aardvark Heights and is emblematic of our values of hard work, persistence and ingenuity. Congratulations to the Fallow Acres Four on your excellent Halloween-themed carving of our very own Arnie the Aardvark! You'll each be receiving a generously donated punch card good for twelve free meals at the Slingshot Diner, a beloved local institution," the golden retriever called, as more scattered applause started up. 
The boys were stunned. They placed runner up? ... They placed runner-up! 
"We won something? Holy shit! Guys, we won something!" Colin jumped to his feet, instantly jazzed. The others followed suit, jumping to their feet with excited cheers and shouts; save for Belly who was still frozen in shock.
"Yes! Slingshot burgers!" Kelly cheered.
"Fuck slingshot burgers, chocolate malts and french fries, dude!" Zach giggled, throwing an arm around Kelly's shoulders, as Colin hauled Belly up to his feet and hugged him.
"Good job, Belly, dude! Your design won!" he cheered. Belly didn't seem to know how to respond, and just shied close to Colin's side as he felt eyes upon him.
The boys never even heard who won first, they were so busy celebrating their own victory at first, but the celebration soon turned to wary watchfulness as Zach spotted something in the crowd.
"Shit, guys! There's a Montgomery here," Zach stage-whispered to the group, having caught a flash of white and rusty-red fur in the crowd.
"You sure, dude?" Colin asked, craning his neck to look around. "I don't see any."
"Dead nuts! There aren't any other red squirrels in town," the cat said with worry evident on his voice.
"Uh, alright. Let's keep an eye out and get out of here as quick as possible. Belly, you're up," Colin said, scheming. He took the ticket from Zach and pushed it into the opossum's paw, and Belly took it on reflex.
"Huh? Why me?" Belly asked, grimacing at being forced into the limelight again.
"Because none of the Montgomeries know you," Colin hissed. "We'll be right behind you, don't worry."
"Uuuugh. Fine," Belly said, with his usual protest. He waited for the focus on the winners to die down a bit before he stepped up and fidgeted uncomfortably in the short line to claim their prize. The others hung back in the crowd, doing their best to blend in as they looked out in three different directions, back-to-back with each other. The group of hyenas and rabbits in front of Belly moved away while chattering amongst themselves as they went, and the bespectacled lioness looked down to Belly. She didn't smile.
"Ticket?" she asked. Belly froze for a moment, though he was reanimated by her urging. "Well? Do you have your ticket?" Belly blinked, and looked down at the ticket in his hand, then held it up to her without a word, anxious bees swarming in his belly as some hissed whispering from the crowd behind him struck a nerve, though he didn't register in the moment what it was.
"Oh, that's right, you're one of the Fallow Acres kids. Congratulations," she said, marking on her clipboard before taking down a little envelope from the clipboard with their group's name on it. She offered it to Belly, who reached up to accept it, just as a huge, overall-wearing red squirrel in his fifties or sixties seemingly appeared out of nowhere beside the lioness.
"So yer th' lil' sum'bitch what stole mah' punkin, eh?" the red squirrel said, aggressively enough that Belly's instinct to freeze wracked him and he found himself stuck clutching the envelope between both paws as he stared up at the big red squirrel in horror. Mrs. Pridemore clocked Belly's terrified expression, and her gaze redirected to the red squirrel without so much as a crack in her leonine stoicism. She turned to address the Montgomery squirrel, conveniently placing herself just between Belly and the later-middle-aged farmer.
"Sir, please watch your language; there's children present," she said, "If you have an issue with the results of the competition you can feel free to file a feedback form at City Hall on Monday." 
"Shit, we've been made! Cheese it!" Kelly shouted from the crowd. The cat and rat scattered in opposite directions, and Colin bodily snatched Belly into motion on his way past as the gang disappeared amongst the gathered crowd at a full run.

"What are we gonna do?" Belly worried, panting as he and Colin recovered under the cover of a cinder-block partition that housed one of the least-offensive dumpsters in town, positioned in a quiet alleyway four blocks from the park and tucked cozily behind a car dealership. It was only one of their numerous regrouping points scattered throughout the city in case the gang got split up for any reason.
"What do you mean?" Colin asked, carefully extracting the envelope from Belly's hands, where the opossum had nervously wrung it into a mauled curl of palm-sweaty paper.
"The Montgomeries are on to us, dude. Red knows where we live, so does Bobby. I should've just kept my stupid mouth shut. 'Fallow Acres Four', ugh, I'm so stupid. What if they come looking for us?" the opossum groaned. "We could get in real trouble, Coll-boy. We might even go to juvie!"
"You worry too much, dude, nobody's going to juvie over a stupid pumpkin," Colin said as he watched the opossum nervously peeking up and down the alleyway, "It'll cool down in a few days. 'til then we just play dumb, we don't know anything, didn't see anything. As far as your mom knows you were sleeping over at my house. Just stick to that story," the raccoon said, nimbly flattening the envelope before peeling the golden sticker off the back and sticking it to Belly's shirt. He opened the envelope, and carefully extracted the four wrinkled but sturdy business cards with marks for punches. He waved one at Belly, and the opossum grimaced.
"I feel bad for taking free food from Jim, too," Belly sulked, before going back to fretfully watching up and down the alley. Colin rolled his eyes, and planted a hand on Belly's shoulder.
"It's alright, man," Colin said, using his free hand to deftly slip the opossum's wallet out of his pocket without Belly noticing, "Think about it this way, we saved Jim money by winning these."
"Wha..? What're you talking about, Coll-boy?" Belly mumbled, looking to the raccoon who was unashamedly ripping open the Velcro from Belly's wallet to tuck the voucher safely beside his library card. Belly barely even acknowledged the pick-pocketing.
"He already lets us just pay whatever we've got, right? So this just stops four other people from getting free food from him. It's totally win-win," Colin said as he offered the wallet back to Belly once it was closed up again.
"I hate how good you are at that," Belly mumbled as he took his wallet back and returned it to the pocket of his shorts. "It's not a win-win if you're a Montgomery," Belly said with his trademark grimace.
"Shit, ain't that the truth," Colin laughed. A distant scuff in the alleyway's gravel drew the pair's attention to the approach of Kelly and Zach who were giggling with their own bit of a criminal's high as they caught their breath.
"Ah, hey guys!" Zach panted, slipping through the gate with Kelly right behind him. "Sorry we're late, we wound up at a different spot. So are we gonna go get lunch at the Slingshot or what? I'm starving," the kitten grinned. Colin handed them both their vouchers.
"Your payment for a hard night's work, operatives," the raccoon laughed, "Belly and I were just talking about that, ready for lunch, dude?" Colin asked, throwing his arm around the opossum's shoulder and marching him out from behind the dumpster and down the alleyway. Belly reluctantly settled into a steady walk with the others.
"I am pretty hungry," Belly admitted as he settled into motion, and the others' excitement finally started to wear off on him.
"Heck yeah, dude! I'm starving," Colin laughed, "I'm gonna' order chicken and waffles and a chocolate Dr. Pepper. What about you?"
"Uhh," Belly thought, "...Chicken strips and gravy?"
"You can do better than that," Colin teased Belly as they passed the public billboard in the front of the copy shop.
"Chicken strips and gravy and a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake! With extra whipped cream and two cherries. And half of Kellogg's fries," Belly blurted, and the others laughed.
"Now we're talkin'!" Zach laughed.
"Woah, wait a second, what was that?" Colin asked, stopping and back-tracking to the billboard. "Guys, it says here there's a Halloween costume competition tonight at --" the raccoon was abruptly cut off by Belly's hands on his shoulders, dragging him away from the billboard to face the opossum who was staring hard, straight into his eyes.
"Coll-boy, I swear on the spirit of Arnie the Vampire Aardvark that if you don't just let us have this fucking win, just for the weekend, I will unmake you," Belly uttered in a menacingly flat tone, whispering the last two words in a terrifying tone that utterly shattered the gang's every assumption of the opossum's character. Kelly and Zach just stared in slack-jawed awe at the exchange.
"Ho-ly shit, okay, yeah, buddy. We can take the rest of the weekend off," Colin said with the sort of tender, reassuring tone one might try and fail to soothe a cornered feral cat with. A tense moment ticked away as Belly's exhausted, blood-shot and nerve-wracked gaze searched Colin's wide-eyed expression, before the opossum abruptly released the raccoon and turned back to keep walking toward the Slingshot, his tone returning instantly back to normal.
"Good. This is the first Halloween I get without Mikey to fuck it up and steal all my candy, and we still have to figure out a group costume for trick-or-treating," Belly said as he left the others dumbstruck on the sidewalk behind him.
 
-END-